Bernie Moreno, Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio, attends a campaign event in Holland, Ohio, on Saturday, October 26, 2024. (Sherrod Brown).
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call Inc. | Getty Images
Until he announced his run for Senate in April 2023, Bernie Moreno had been an unknown political figure. A former Cleveland-area car salesman, his only previous political experience was an unsuccessful run for Ohio’s other Senate seat in 2022.
Since then, Moreno has accomplished the once unthinkable.
On November 5, in the election that returned Donald Trump to the White House, Moreno defeated Democratic incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown, who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 and subsequently Won a Senate seat in 2006 and served as powerful banking chairman.
Moreno’s rise from unknown Ohio businessman to prominent political leader was no accident. His campaign has been backed by $40 million from the cryptocurrency industry, part of a highly targeted effort to elect friendly candidates and, perhaps more importantly, neutralize critics. Moreno’s victory was among the Senate seats Republicans flipped to gain control of the House.
Cryptocurrency-related PACs and other groups associated with the industry have collectively taken in more than $245 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. Cryptocurrencies accounted for nearly half of all corporate money flowing into the election, according to nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen. Stand With Crypto Alliance, an advocacy group launched by Coinbase last year, has developed a scoring system for House and Senate races across the country to help determine where money should be spent.
Cryptocurrency industry executives, investors and evangelists view the election as crucial for an industry that has struggled to grow over the past four years while suffering another blow. According to Stand With Crypto, nearly 300 pro-cryptocurrency lawmakers will take seats in the House and Senate, giving the industry unprecedented influence over the legislative agenda.
Cryptocurrency political lobbying has worked extremely well in this cycle because it makes something complex like campaign financing simple: raise large amounts of cash from a handful of donors and buy ad space in battleground states, or support support Cryptocurrency candidates, or discredit those who support cryptocurrencies. It also requires viewing candidates as somewhat binary: They are either for the industry or against it.
Cryptocurrency companies and their executives moved quickly, and they successfully figured out how to deploy cash through sophisticated advertising machines across the country. They’ve also learned from the mistakes made by big tech companies. Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers after the election, the cryptocurrency industry is investing in targeting their opponents before the election so they don’t have to deal with them for years to come.
For more than a year, Moreno has been consulted by Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and David Sacks on blockchain technology, digital asset policy and The torture of changes in the global financial landscape.
“They didn’t jump right out of the gate,” Moreno said, describing dozens of meetings since he entered the primary. “We had to build a lot of trust.”
Moreno also met with Coin library Co-founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam and head of policy Faryar Shirzad. Armstrong and Elsam did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the conference via Coinbase.
Coinbase, the largest U.S. digital asset exchange, has been fighting the SEC in court for more than a year. The company is the cryptocurrency king of the 2024 cycle, having donated more than $75 million to a super PAC called Fairshake. It has been one of the highest-spending committees of any industry this cycle, exclusively funneling money to pro-crypto candidates running for Congress. Fierschak’s candidates won nearly every campaign he financed in the general election.
‘Anti-cryptocurrency is bad politics,’ says Coinbase’s Armstrong write on X After Moreno won.
As the price of Bitcoin has increased approximately sixfold in the past four years, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has taken major cryptocurrency players such as Coinbase and Ripple to court, accusing them of selling unregistered securities and Avoid working with companies to create new specialized regulations.
Meanwhile, Senator Brown has sided with Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a vocal opponent of cryptocurrencies over their alleged role in funding terrorist groups including Hamas. Following the failure of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in late 2022, Brown became more vocal in his calls for a crackdown on the industry.
As FTX slid into bankruptcy, Brown retweeted a post from the Senate Banking Committee on November 10, saying the incident “sounds a loud alarm that cryptocurrencies can fail” and could have “dangerous consequences for consumers and our financial system.” A chain reaction occurs in other parts of the system.
this Bipartisan Fairness Shaq Won all but three races in the general election, investing heavily in battles for key seats between Republicans and Democrats. Protect Progress, a Fairshake-affiliated PAC, donated more than $10 million each to Democratic Senate candidates in Arizona and Michigan. Both won. Another Fairshake-affiliated political action committee, Defend American Jobs, spent more than $3 million to support West Virginia Republican Jim Justice, who will start the new session in 2025. Taking over Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s former seat.
In California, Fairshake spent more than $10 million to defeat Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in California’s Senate primary. Advertisement for her.
“I was like, ‘What the hell is Fairshake?'” Porter Tell The New Yorker.
How do technology brothers make choices?
The senator-elect told CNBC that those scrutinizing Moreno want to see what he would do differently than the current administration and regulatory system.
“These people know how to vet investments, they know how to vet people, and they applied the same discipline to me,” Moreno said.
It helped that he founded a blockchain startup, a company called Champ Titles, to digitize car ticketing and registration.
“They don’t want to invest their time, their energy and their energy into someone who is going to be a disappointment in the end,” Moreno said.
Spokespeople for Andreessen and Horowitz, co-founders of a venture capital firm that bears their names, declined to comment. Craft Ventures founder Saxophone did not respond to CNBC’s request for an interview.
Coinbase’s Shirzad met Moreno over breakfast in Washington this spring. Shirzad said in an interview with CNBC that Moreno is not an expert on the details of the policy issues he is pursuing, but has a clear understanding of encryption technology and its applications.
“It was a really good exchange of ideas as a policy expert and he as a business person saw the potential of this technology,” Shirzad said.
David McIntosh, an early supporter of Moreno’s Senate campaign and president of the Club for Growth, a conservative group focused on U.S. economic issues, said Moreno was burned out in a difficult and expensive primary. All funds, now no more cash. McIntosh said Felshack played a crucial role in Moreno’s campaign, which began in the summer.
McIntosh said Moreno’s victory over Brown “sends a very strong signal to Washington that voters will support candidates who support blockchain.”
McIntosh noted that Club for Growth spent $6.5 million to help Moreno advertise in the primary through its various super PACs, including the Bitcoin Freedom Fund.
Brown’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
brown tell politicians He has not ruled out running for Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s vacant Ohio Senate seat, which will be filled through a special election in 2026.
Sherzad said Moreno benefited from pitching himself as a “change” candidate, while Brown “became a defender of the status quo.”
“Thematically, cryptocurrencies are a matter of change,” Shirzad said. “It appeals not only to young people but also to voters who want change.”
Fairshake declined to comment on whether it would spend money to prevent Brown from running for Senate again, but the super PAC has raised $78 million for the 2026 midterm elections.
“We have stuck to our core strategy from day one, supporting pro-crypto candidates against those who play politics with jobs and innovation, and ultimately winning,” Fairshake told CNBC in a statement.
“The most pro-crypto Congress ever”
The past two election cycles have been characterized by spending by now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried. In March, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing more than $8 billion worth of customer funds through FTX.
This year’s list of contributors is stronger, but sees a lot of money coming from companies that have feuded with SEC Chairman Gensler for years. These include Coinbase and blockchain giant Ripple Labs. One of the other major contributors is well-known venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, which has a large portfolio of cryptocurrency companies.
Many big names in the cryptocurrency world also made significant contributions in 2024.
FEC file display Cameron and Taylor Winklevoss is one of the largest individual cryptocurrency donors this election cycle, A total of $10.1 million was donated. Ripple’s top executives have donated millions of dollars, led by billionaire founder Chris Larsen, who donated about $12 million this round.
Coinbase CEO Armstrong has donated more than $1.3 million to PACs such as Fairshake and J.D. Vance for Senator Inc. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal attended at least two Trump fundraisers, including one during the year’s largest Bitcoin event in Nashville, Tennessee.
Siren Chairman Jesse Powell Donated more than $1 million to the Trump campaign.
Other individual crypto contributors include former Bitfinex head of strategy Phil Porter (over $1.6 million), Multicoin Capital Kelsamani ($878,600), Paradigm co-founder Fred Essam ($735,400), Partner, Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson ($1.4 million), Paxos CEO Charles Cascarella ($198,500), CEO of BitGo Mike Belsh ($119,825), Co-founder of Solana Anatoly Yakovenko ($67,100), founder of Xapo Bank Wences Casares ($374,899).
This week, Armstrong reportedly Meet with the President-elect to discuss appointments. Within a day, discussions began about the potential of the White House. The first cryptocurrency czar. By the end of the week, SEC Chairman Gensler, a longtime opponent of cryptocurrencies, announced that he would retire on Inauguration Day, with his term not set to expire until June 2026.
One of Trump’s campaign promises to cryptocurrency fans was that if elected, he would fire the SEC chairman and select a cryptocurrency-friendly regulator. Gensler may have understood the pressure he was facing in Washington and decided it wasn’t worth trying to hold on.
“Welcome to the most pro-cryptocurrency Congress America has ever seen,” Armstrong write on X November 5.
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